Jaysus, I knew it. I been sayin this for feckin ages but all the lads say ‘Ah youre pissed Paddy’ or ‘Yer cracked Paddy’ or suchlike. Now maybe you boyos will feckin listen to me – the oil industry owns the feckin’ wind farms and the pylons I bet.

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Makes sense dunnit? If you need more power stations to back up the dodgy windmills, then if you build more windmills you need to build more power stations. Scratch my arse an I’ll scratch yours.

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So what does that mean? The oil boyos buy the feckin wind industry, convince the government (who couldn’t find their own arse in the jacks) that they need to build all these wind farms or else they will have to pay the EU zillions in fines, and they make money selling windfarms, making a fortune in subsidies, and selling more oil and gas to run all the new power stations to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow.

Lately when I’ve got off the jacks, Peig would give out about the whiff and ask if I’d be eating elephant grass again. What are you on about woman, I’d say, this is feckin Ireland, why would we be needing grass to feed the elephants – is that shite circus back in town?

Herself: ‘Not elephants ye feckwit, power stations. The farmers were growing that, and hemp, to burn as fuel, it’s called biomass’.

Feeding elephants and growing dope – what would the IFA say about that? Probably like most of us when we get caught with the joint in the pocket – sure officer, that’s not what it looks like, it’s just straw for the horse.

Peig’s brother is a farmer in Limerick, and he be mad for the hemp – sure, your man can throw a party – but he was also using some of his bad land to grow this elephant grass, which apparently came out all watery and shite, not fit to run the Wonderly Wagon, nevermind a feckin powerstation. I remember saying to him at the time – to be sure, would not shite land give you shite grass? Your man mumbled something about using the good land to grow food and the feckin elephant could look after himself, but that was the hemp speaking. Did you ever see a Limerick farmer do the two-step to Bob Marley? Not a pretty sight, but in Limerick I would rather they be singin “We’re Jammin’”, then ‘we’re stabbin’’. To be sure, wouldn’t Limerick be the centre of the hemp industry anyhows?

The elephant grass industry is up and running in Limerick now, but the wheels are coming off. The government is so keen to give all the money to the wind farms that the elephant grass farmer is getting nowt.

A farmer was askin’ me in the pub t’other night when we were talking about hemp with its anti-cancer properties – with the money to be made with meat and dairy, why would ye bother if there’s no subsidy? The short answer to that question, I said, is that there will be no meat and dairy, or racehorses for Cheltenham, if there be pylons all over the countryside. Sure, with pylons around even the elephants will feck off back to India – they’d have more feckin brains than Enda and Pat combined, but Pat would still have the bigger arse.

Now I might only have two years in the college in Maynooth, and that was a while back, but this is banjax-logic: So its grand to pay the wind farms millions in subsidies, and pay them even more to turn off at night, when they cause an increase in CO2 emissions, catch fire, banjax the Grid, and make people go mad with the noise and the flicker? But where a farmer wants to grow an environmentally friendly crop like elephant grass, and a party-friendly crop like hemp, not to mention that lovely-lookin yellow of rape seed – all of which would run the power-stations and keep the locals happy with the smoke comin off it – imagine the smiles at MoneyPoint – you give him feck all? And when the wind farms are providing feckall jobs and importing the yokes and all the spare parts, you’d still not support your local farmer and those looking for jobs in the agri-industry?

Just how is that right, my fine blueshirted friends, with your shares and directorships in the wind industry?